A few days before my birthday, I received a marketing email from one of the few companies I actually don’t mind receiving such emails from. Skimming the email from CameraPro (excellent photography shop in Brisbane), four words, or more accurately, one word and one phrase caught my eye. “Photography” and “Story Bridge climb”.

Story Bridge at Night

The Story Bridge is one of Brisbane’s two most iconic bridges (the other being the Gateway), and like the Sydney Harbour Bridge they now run walking tours up and over the bridge. Usually these tours don’t allow people to carry cameras for safety and financial reasons (the guides take photos you can buy), but the Story Bridge Climb company in conjunction with CameraPro have been able to get around both issues and now run a photography tour. When I first saw the email I thought it was a one off, it was pricey but it was near my birthday, and how many chances would I get? Turns out probably quite a few if I kept my eye out (I think they run once a month), but sometimes you need a sense of urgency to actually do the cool stuff in your local town. So I signed up.

The tour is unique. Usually several groups are on the bridge at any one time, but the photography tour is on its own. The group is kept small, no more than six people, the tour is longer at over three hours, and it’s run at twilight so you get the best light, then the city and bridge at night. It’s definitely a rare experience.

The tour guide (who’s name, to my shame and annoyance, I’ve forgotten) ran through the expected safety procedures, and how we’d be rigged up. He then gave us some valuable hints and tips to photograph the bridge, accompanied with a slideshow of his own photos. His photos were great and set a high standard I hoped to be able to approach. His challenge to us was to take different photos from the usual; he’d seen thousands of bridge photos and they were “all the same”.

We rigged up in our climb suits and tethered our cameras, and looking like a line of blue telly-tubbies we trundled out under the bridge.

Girders

Carpark under the Story Bridge

More girders

Plenty of girders

The Story Bridge opened in 1940, and hasn’t changed much in that time. It was still bright sunlight, so girders were the order of the hour. I spotted a sinking moon lit by the sun from under the bridge. With the different photo challenge in mind, I figured this might be a good start.

We proceeded under the bridge, through the bridge, up the bridge, across the bridge, and down the other side, in the space of over three hours and covering 1176 steps. It didn’t feel much like exercise at the time, but wow did my muscles feel it afterwards. On the way I tried to find a few different angles than just more girders (although I must admit really liked the girders).

Different?

Be Swept Up in the Story

Self Portrait

Girders over nature

Non-paying visitor!

The group in their telly-tubby outfits

The sun set while we were in the middle of the climb and the bridge. Not a spectacular sunset, quite clear skies, but some nice colours around. As the light faded I started playing more with long exposures, and discovered for myself just how much a bridge moves. The tour guide had warned us of this, and gave us a couple of techniques to try and combat it:

Cushion your camera on your elbow folded over a railing

Watch the traffic and time your image so you don’t need to open the shutter for too long. The traffic is controlled at either end by lights, and there are plenty of times when the bridge is empty. To capture light trails it helped to time your capture with the timing of the lights.

The tour guide had some spectacular images with light trails, some taken with 30-40 seconds exposure. I couldn’t even come close to this and still end up with an image vaguely in focus. His hours of experience and steadier hand made an immense difference.

I also tried for a panorama of the CBD glinting in the day’s final sunlight. It’s far from tack sharp if you take a closer look, but I like it anyway.

Brisbane CBD from the Story Bridge

I came away from the photography climb actually feeling a bit disappointed with myself – I didn’t feel I’d taken anything I was happy with or near the standard of the tour guide’s, all I had instead was a deep appreciation of the hours of patience and practice he must have put in to learn the bridge’s foibles and work with them. Still, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve become a bit addicted to post-processing in the last year or so. Post-processing really came into its own here, and when it came to processing I had a lot of fun playing with what would otherwise be very similar photos of girders and lights. Contrasty monochromes were an obvious start, although after a while I got bored of that and tried for dreamy girders instead.

Do girders dream of metallic sheep?

In the end I’m glad I did the tour, the photos don’t do the experience of being up there with the changing light justice. I might even do it again some day.

Lately I’ve become interested in astrophotography. Not so much shooting galaxies in deep space (yet), but capturing star trails and the Milky Way are my two of my latest challenges (along with panoramas, HDR, and all of Photoshop. Focus, haha, is not my strongest point).

So far the most important lesson has been that you can focus past infinity! Who knew! Turns out beyond infinity is quite fuzzy and doesn’t make for the greatest photograph. I had my best luck by having the camera focus on something at least 10 metres away, like torchlight lighting up a tree, but I learnt the hard way to check, check, then check again zoomed in as much as your camera will allow on your LCD. Infinity is often slightly to the left if where it’s marked on your lens; on my to-do list is to mark exactly where it is on my lenses.

Otherwise, many of the usual things for long exposures apply to astrophotography:

Tripod

Remote release or timed release – no vibration from shutter pressing

Turn off IS/VR

One I keep forgetting: Take a black exposure, ie with the lens cap on. It can be used to remove noise by stacking software

A focus trick: Turn off auto focus. Look at Live View, zoom aaaaaall the way in with zoom buttons, manually focus on a bright star until it’s a sharp point. Don’t touch the lens again!

For the Milky Way:

High ISO

Likely no longer than 30 seconds exposure, otherwise you’ll start to get star trails. Test this however, it is dependent on your focal length

Get that black exposure!

Conversely, for star trails:

Low ISO

20-30 second exposures, but play with this. The longer the exposure, the more noise, but also more stars

For star trails, I’ve had some reasonable success with Star Stax. It’s not perfect, but it was how I was able to put together this star trail taken over my house, in suburban Brisbane (yes the house is ugly, we’re planning a renovation which has its own blog at Gecko Reno).

Southern Celestial Pole over my house

I’d like to say I knew the Southern Celestial Pole was there, but I did not. I was expecting some arcs and mostly just out there to learn and practise, so it was quite a kick to see the pole. Given it’s my first attempt I’m not unhappy with this at all.

My first Milky Way is less successful. This was taken up near Ballandean, in Queensland’s Granite Belt region. The Granite Belt is up to 900 metres above sea level, and the coolest region in Queensland, so it makes for beautiful clear skies (I wrote about a previous visit to the region here). Unfortunately the weather wasn’t really playing ball; a strong wind blew regular clouds and rain squalls over us so I only had a short window to play in. This is the best attempt, but I’m not really happy with the noise or the composition or the wow factor of the stars.

Milky Way over the Granite Belt

The following night I had another short go. My husband insisted on trying some 60 second exposures – I was dubious thinking we’d end up with star trails, but actually that was ok. Less ok is the noise and the hot pixels, but then they’re only visible when pixel peeping which is a bad habit of mine developed from submitting images to stock photography sites. I’d be interested to know which photo people prefer!

Milky Way 60 seconds

Will also liked the stars being blue. Post-processing these images is an art in itself which I can’t claim to have come to grips with but I’m working on. These Lightroom presets by David Kingham, and the accompanying videos, have helped immensely however. The presets are donation-ware and I’ve donated, if you find them useful I recommend that you do too. I can vouch that sussing this stuff out on your own isn’t straight-forward, especially the white balance.

On a final note: my uncle sent me this interesting video of a lecture given by Barbara Cunow. Cunow is an amateur photographer who’s photographed all 110 Messier objects, with minimal equipment and terrible light pollution but some smart photography and processing techniques to compensate. A lot to learn!

I’ve rarely printed any of my photos, and recently I had a lesson in why this is a habit I should get into, especially if I’m to continue selling my work through microstock, Redbubble, Zazzle, and Fine Art America. I entered a local photo competition, which required an A4 size print of your work, framed, to display. I entered two works, one which printed out just fine, and one which really just didn’t look right. Darks were too dark, spot removals were obvious, weird halos in the sky around the foreground objects, lines too soft, bright colours not all that bright. What I thought would take me five minutes took all afternoon as I tweaked and printed and tweaked and printed and tweaked (and printed and tweaked and printed and tweaked and printed and tweaked…).

Eventually I got an image I was happy with, but it cost me all my new magenta cartridge and a fair whack of photo paper.

Sandgate – Cliff St framed by the old Baptist church, opened in 1877, and the sculpture “Surge” by Davis-Thomas, installed in 2007

This weekend, I’ve been printing as many images as I can that I have on Redbubble, and now I sit surrounded by prints waiting their 24 hours to pass to I can see the final colour. Already I’ve learnt that black and whites seem to have a yellow tinge when they first leave the printer but that has faded to true monochrome. Otherwise, I’m pleased that so far, all of my prints look fine, although I haven’t yet gone over them with a fine toothcomb. It has cost me another magenta cartridge, plus a blue and yellow this time, but it’s worth it for the peace of mind that anything anyone buys from me to print should work out just fine (and I’ve now found a cheaper shop online to buy toner!).

It’s also made me review some of my older images, and I’m finding I’m not so happy with them as I once was, but I guess that means I’m learning something.

If you’re curious about that photo competition, I didn’t win anything, but apparently I caused “a lot of discussion” with the photo above. Still wondering if that’s good or bad!

So WordPress are showing off a new feature, and with the theme being “Happy” the challenge for me was limiting the new photo gallery to only nine photos. Missing from the gallery are all the people who make me happy, but here’s several things from around the world that will always bring a smile to my face: Bright coloured flowers and the sunny days they grow in; spotting wildlife right on my front door (or in this case, my front fence); sharing the beautiful world around me through photography; relaxing in beautiful locations (a glass of wine can add to with happiness too!); living near the sea, and seeing the full moon bright on a clear night. Fireworks! Being high up; being in love, loving, and feeling loved; and I can’t go past a kitten for instant happiness, so here’s two!

Nine months ago I moved from the close quarters of London to sprawling Brisbane surburbia, so it’s easy for me to appreciate the area I live in. Just today, I walked with my husband along the shore, holding hands in the sunlight as gentle waves lapped below, watching kids hunting for crabs in the rocks. Just today I said I feel so lucky to be here, to have this lifestyle at my doorstep, and while London was certainly a lot of fun, it feels right that this is home for me now.

I live a few minutes walk from Bramble Bay, in the north of Brisbane, Australia. Sunset is often a glorious time at the bay.

Sunset at Bramble Bay

I’m told the sunrises are also amazing, but I’m not a morning person and have yet to manage being awake before dawn.

The bay is protected by Moreton Island, a large sand island 37kms long, so waves here are little more than the ripples caused by wind and tide. This is not a surfer’s beach, more a place to stroll and breathe and relax.

Seagulls on Shorncliffe Pier

Shorncliffe Pier is a local historical landmark, opened in 1872, but recently closed due to safety concerns over marine borers weakening the old supports. There is a worry that the council will tear down this beautiful old pier and replace it with a concrete monstrosity, and as a result of the subsequent protest by locals, the talk from officials has been only of repair work, not replacement. But although an engineering report has been completed, no work is planned to commence for another year, so “Save the Pier” signs still adorn many front fences.

For a little piece of suburbia, we have great wildlife. Flocks of rainbow lorikeets are common, and in autumn they love eating the berries off the tree right outside my front door.

Cheeky!

Ibis are also very common. Generally considered more of a pest than an attraction, as they’ll snatch food out of your hand as soon as look at you and you can imagine the mess they leave on your car, when they’re gliding overhead they’re a graceful sight.

Ibis over Bramble Bay

Not all our wildlife is so photogenic. One summer day after a strong wind, our bay waters were filled with these little beauties.

Jellyblubber Sea

Completely harmless, but why swim in water when you can walk on it!

Bringing it home, as we are in surburbia, these little creatures both torment and delight me every day.

The challenge is “What can you merge in a photo?”. You can merge anything digitally these days, but that’s not where my interest lies (and definitely not what little skill I might have either). Thankfully the world merges plenty of funny things all on its own, without digital help, and here’s one I managed to capture.

March of the Machines

Mighty machines greet a majestic sky at sunrise. I took this photo of the Port of Brisbane as I was flying into Brisbane airport, through the plane window; it was one of those sights that just leapt out and shouted “photograph me!”

Why, oh why, couldn’t I have read this theme yesterday, when I had the partial lunar eclipse to photograph! Instead, today was a typical work day, rush to the train in the morning and walk home in the dark; generally not much of interest.

But I do carry a camera with me most of the time, so I used my lil Canon Powershot G12 to finally capture an image I’ve been looking at outside my window at work for a while now. I’m not sure that compositionally it’s the most amazing photo, I found it a hard one to get that oomph factor out of, but regardless, here’s a part of my view where I spend 40 hours of my waking life.

Brisbane Old and New

A modest skyscraper in the late afternoon sun under a fluffy blue sky. I particularly like the reflection of the old church in the modern glass, and the way the shiny building rises out of its older, run-down surroundings.